


When I Am Gone, The World Keeps Turning

by Pic_Akai



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-29
Updated: 2012-05-29
Packaged: 2017-11-06 06:10:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pic_Akai/pseuds/Pic_Akai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Mycroft retires, there is no leaving party. This is how the British government copes when he is no longer the British government.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When I Am Gone, The World Keeps Turning

**Author's Note:**

> This is dedicated to the anon(s?) on the rant meme who were discussing what they think would happen when Mycroft retires. Thank you for the unintended prompt.
> 
> As this is set several decades into the future, I thought it likely that there may be some changes to the way we live, particularly where technology and transport are concerned. If you see some unfamiliar concepts or words in the narrative, that ought to account for them. They should be clear enough in context if you keep the fact that this is set in the future in mind, but if you do find anything confusing, please feel free to ask about it or let me know and I'll try to explain it better.
> 
> There is also a companion piece of sorts to this called Thank You For Letting Me Pretend; where this is angsty as all get out, the other piece is a much happier take on the same situation.

When Mycroft retires, there is no leaving party.

He is seventy two years old, two years past the usual retirement age for a man in a position like his. He has managed to hold onto it for the past two years by working to the best of his abilities and no lower. But as he gets older and the world moves faster, the best of his abilities are eventually not good enough to meet the requirements of his post.

Younger men move in to take his place. If he were less intelligent, Mycroft might preen about the fact that it appears to take more than one to replace him, but he knows well enough that the establishment are simply hedging their bets. These men - and indeed, one woman - will be in direct competition with one another for the next few years, and whoever comes out on top as the most ruthless, most efficient, quietest and most like Mycroft will end up in his place. The others will remain below the victor, using their skills in positions less vital.

On his last day, Mycroft holds a meeting with the Belgian ambassador, who is thirty years his junior. Mycroft has never really felt old before - that is, he has always felt old, but never felt like he has aged - but today, sitting across from this man who will likely get up tomorrow and go back to work in the same manner he did today, Mycroft feels like time has stopped for him.

When he returns from the meeting, his office - the last of his offices, for he has used many - has been packed away, which really means that his notebook and pen are set neatly at the edge of the desk and his umbrella and coat are slightly tidier than when he left them. The coat, he notes absently, has been dry cleaned. Why it should be necessary for someone who is retiring to have their coat dry cleaned before they leave, Mycroft doesn't know, but he does know that had it not happened he would have felt unnerved.

He pretends to make final notes to a final report for half an hour, while his assistant pretends not to know he is pretending. When he realises he hasn't managed to make a note for the last five minutes, because his mind keeps blanking out, Mycroft sets down the pen and prepares to leave.

Coat on, umbrella over his arm, he shakes his assistant's hand and thanks her for nothing in particular. She smiles at him and turns back to her tablet and Mycroft knows she will go home herself, soon, but tomorrow she will wake up and get ready to go somewhere else, assist someone who isn't him, who is still useful.

He returns to his penthouse. He will stay there overnight and then travel to the house tomorrow, after which the penthouse will be transferred to its new owners. He will keep the small London flat because it's always useful to have somewhere to stay, especially while Sherlock is still here. He has been making noises for the past twenty years about moving to Sussex, but the timescale for that seems to depend entirely upon John's arthritis. His knees make it difficult for him to do quite as much running these days as they used to, but thanks to the wonder of technology Sherlock is able to do the legwork himself, easily sharing with John what happens along the way. The downside of this is that Sherlock is still not much better at keeping himself out of life-threatening situations, and when they occur John is often at home, only able to watch.

Mycroft is glad that even though he is retiring, he is not left entirely without resources. He has set up ways and means to keep Sherlock alive and moderately well for as long as possible, no matter if Mycroft himself dies first, though he suspects he won't. Despite his plans, even he has to admit that the best way of keeping Sherlock alive is one John Watson. Even if the work fails Sherlock, or he fails the work, he has a reason to keep living so long as John is alive.

The day after he retires, Mycroft wakes up and checks his messages. He is confused for several moments as the bulk of them seem to be missing, until he remembers the change which has come about. He then gets up, has his breakfast, gets dressed and leaves in much the same manner as he usually does, except when he leaves he isn't picked up straight away. He hails a taxi - two simply drive past before he manages this - and directs it to the transport station. He takes a transport to Kent, takes another taxi from there to the house, and thus begins his life as a retired person. He is not, and will never be, a pensioner.

Mycroft has not taken anything that could be reasonably described as a holiday since he was at school. Even during university, technically he had holidays between the terms, but these were filled with a mixture of research, preparations for the coming terms and the beginnings of what would afterwards be his full-time job. Relaxing wasn't exactly on the agenda. Then again, Mycroft isn't entirely sure he relaxed during his holidays as a boy.

He wonders if he would feel better prepared for retirement if he had taken some holidays every now and then. He might have had some idea of what to do with his time when it isn't constantly being pressed upon by everybody else. He finds himself reading the newspapers in the mornings - he orders the print editions and will continue to do so until the day he dies; he is a traditionalist - and connecting the dots between the stories and what isn't reported. That, he has always done, and he could no more switch that off than he could the sun, but he also cannot seem to cease adding mental notes for orders to make, plans to engage, people to contact.

It is not Mycroft's job to do these things any more and yet he has no idea how to not do them.

He receives little correspondence. He has few friends, fewer still who have any substantial time to spend with him, and he would never beg for their company. He contacts Sherlock as often as he dares, creating a method to ensure his calls or visits are strictly random without even thinking about it. He doesn't want Sherlock pointing out how empty his life is, how he needs this contact from a brother who doesn't really care about him just to keep some meaning in it. Thus he drops by when he is in the city to have a suit tailored, calls if he has been contacted by an ex-colleague wanting some obscure piece of knowledge which he feels it will be quicker to get from Sherlock rather than find out himself, and Sherlock mentions nothing. Mycroft thinks John looks at him sometimes like he knows, but he doesn't say anything either, and Mycroft is grateful for that.

He visits the Diogenes club far less often than he did before. (Before, when Mycroft had a purpose in life.) Partly this is because it is fairly far to travel, but he knows those who theoretically live in another county and yet spend the week in London, returning home at weekends, often to a family. Mostly, he doesn't visit because he doesn't want to be one of those people who advertise by their presence that they have nothing more useful to do, nowhere more pressing to be. It is possible to work at the Diogenes and Mycroft has done so on many occasions himself, but everyone there knows that he is retired now.

Besides, loneliness is amplified at the Diogenes. He feels better at home, even though there are no longer any staff. At the house there is just Mycroft and a wealth of technology which keeps him both well-connected and entirely separated from everyone else.

One of the things Mycroft finds hardest to deal with is the realisation that the world keeps turning when he has gone. He no longer holds the great power he has done for decades, no longer has a hand in momentous decisions. It makes no difference to the establishment or the country or the world, at this point, if he lives or dies. Logically he has always known that this is true, for no one is indispensable. Emotionally, however, it is more difficult to come to terms with.

There is a time when Sherlock is injured during a fight in a pub, where he is undercover for a case. It is fifteen minutes before Mycroft even knows; he receives a phone call from Sherlock's security detail who say they are on the way to the hospital now, having been given the slip by Sherlock earlier. He deals with them calmly and cordially on the phone and then thinks when he has ended the call about how exactly he will ruin their lives. It takes him several long moments before he remembers he can't do that any longer. They don’t fear him and they don't feel loyal to him; he just pays them to do a job.

When occasionally he ventures into the town, he comes across old people who talk to anyone who they can pretend might be listening to them about the weather, their myriad health complaints, the few people they still know, the many people they used to know, particularly those who have died, and how things have changed since when they were young, when they were middle-aged, last year, yesterday. Mycroft smiles vaguely and politely like he is any other young person with too much on his mind to be bothered with their thoughts, but that is a lie.

He refuses to become one of them. He is alone and always has been because there are precious few people he could ever trust to have close, and none of them were ever interested enough in him to be so. If he were to talk to these old people, share their mindless mumblings about bruises on apples and how long it takes them to climb stairs when it's cold, any connections he made would be as superficial as those he had with his drivers. Less so, in fact, as none of these people would expect to take a bullet for him should it be necessary (which it never will again). It is easier to remain aloof.

And so he does, as time passes and he ages further and his health declines. Nothing of note happens in his life after he retires but he keeps stories ready anyway, just in case somebody asks. Nobody does.

Sherlock and John do move to Sussex, and Sherlock has an aviary installed. He had wanted to keep bees, but John is allergic to their stings and though he was willing to risk it, Sherlock wasn't. At the age of sixty nine, Sherlock is diagnosed with breast cancer. Mycroft goes to see him then, doesn't pretend it is for any reason other than sentiment, and three weeks later both Sherlock and John are found dead by the security detail, both having overdosed with some lethal cocktail of substances.

Mycroft visits them one last time and notes that while Sherlock looks uncomfortable, his face pressed into John's shoulder, John has a smile on his face. He wishes he will look like that when he dies and knows in the same breath that he won't.

He receives condolences from many people, most of whom he has never before met or spoken with. He puts paper cards and letters up on the mantelpiece and tables and electronic messages on the walls. The living room at the house looks like a shrine to Sherlock (and John) and he doesn't care, because nobody else will see it.

When the time comes for him to ensure that things are all in order, he makes some minor adjustments to his will. He specifies that there should be no eulogy given at his funeral. This is purely because even dead, Mycroft would rather not spread the embarrassment to others about the fact that there is no one who is suitable to talk about him like this. In his prime, Her Majesty the Queen herself would have been able to give him a thoroughly suitable send-off. By the time Mycroft is drawing close to death, he doubts the King could even recall his name.

Mycroft wonders what his life might have been like if he could have found someone, anyone, to share it with. But as he never came close, he finds it difficult to imagine. Perhaps it is of greater comfort not to know what it is he's missing, but he wouldn't know.

**Author's Note:**

> I adore concrit.


End file.
